Song of the Yellow Asters

Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger

The life of Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, a cousin of Paul Celan, was cut short in a Nazi labor camp, but her poems survived to bear witness with lyric tenderness, resilience, and enduring humanity. Meerbaum-Eisinger collected her poems—alongside translations from French, Yiddish, and Romanian—written between the ages of 15 and 17, in a meticulously crafted handbound volume titled Blütenlese. Drawing on a rich folkloric and literary lineage from Verlaine to Rilke to Tagore, these 57 poems explore love, nature, and the human spirit under occupation and amid the Holocaust. Carlie Hoffman's new English translation returns Meerbaum-Eisinger to her rightful place among twentieth-century Eastern European poets who offered a living song of remembrance to the horrors of their era.